Analog world

Just like theories;
All analogies are wrong.
Some are useful.

Analogies are wonderful things.
They are the way we learn and understand.

As analogies help us see similarities,
They help us connect many differing observations,
They weave loose phenomena into a more sturdy coherent world view;
A steadier platform from which we can operate.

Unlike theories;
Analogies don't attempt to present themselves as true.
They don't attempt to be perfect,
Just useful.

Good vibrations

This week I received a new concrete vibrator. Immediately I started to experiment with vibrating mud. It does a marvelous job liquefying stiff mud and helping it flow. When the vibrations are removed, the mud gets stiff again.

Then I noticed that the mud flows counterclockwise around the vibrating wand. There was something oddly familiar about the picture of the mud circling the wand. Finally I remembered...
It looks a lot like pictures I have seen many times in basic electricity books; it looks like a magnetic field flowing around a current carrying wire.

This has to be an analogy telling me something about why a moving electric charge creates a magnetic field. Hopefully the lesson will make itself clear in due time.

Stable structures

One of my lessons this week was about service, and how it relates to multi-level structures.

Members:
Everybody and everything is an organization made up of members. In the case of your body, the members are cells. They are all working hard to make your body systems healthy and viable. In return, the cells get services like food and oxygen and waste disposal and protection.

Hosts:
In turn, everybody and everything are members of larger host organizations. For people it includes governments, corporations, schools, clubs, etc.

Stability:
Any entity that wants to be survivable and stable in the long term needs to provide value to both its members and its hosts.

My take home lesson:
When I need to make a decision, it is usually best to choose a path that benefits both my body and my community.

The royal "We"

I is We
We are Many
Many is one


As I woke this morning, I was still firmly in my dream character while another part of me noticed the state of my physical body and realized I was dreaming, while another part of me was planning my next project. Each was a different persona; a different consciousness.

For a moment I wondered...
Who is this "I" that is observing this?

A burst of parallel answer; too instant, too broad for words; referring to the recursive and fractal nature of community at many overlapping scales. Then the simple words...

I is We
We are Many
Many is one

One track mind, many track brain

Artists, philosophers, physicists, mathematicians, theologians;
The lucky ones are among those who occasionally get such an insight that it leaves them with the thrilling feeling that they have just seen right into the mind of God.

Me?... I seem to keep bumping into God's brain.

Everywhere I look; every dimension, every scale, every interaction of anything, I eventually see how it functions like a brain.

If everything is one big brain, it couldn't help but be omnipotent and omnipresent.

Life in time-space

At some point, your pan dimensional self decided to string together an interesting experience by trying out life in time-space. Time-space is a game, a set of rules you agree to follow; such as limiting yourself to only a four dimensional path (like when we play a board game). If you break the basic rules (actual rules of physics) you must exit the game. Within those rules, you find an infinite freedom of choices.

In this game, you and other players near you collectively blaze a narrow path through the jungle of the pan-dimensional all. We call this path "Time". While following the path, you also have other degrees of freedom. Some of those we collectively call "Space".

One popular strategy in this game is to make your path strong and resilient like a string. When individual fibers intertwine, they become string. The strongest strings have long fibers intertwined with many others. Those fibers are mostly aligned with the length of the string.

Our string is our path; time.

To create long fibers in time;
we pay attention to lessons of the past, learning from it and building on it.
we predict the future, then act to make it comfortable, safe, exciting, noble, etc.

We intertwine these fibers by interacting with each other.

Short fibers are created by;
Breaking basic rules (you die)
Ignoring the past
Don't care about future
Don't prepare for tomorrow

Short fibers don't add much strength to a string, but they do have other characteristics;
They add fluff, fuzziness, body, lubrication,
They dust off the main string, like spores in the wind leaving seeds in other places.
They aid digestion and help scour a path clean.

The difference between the two functions are remarkably like how a brain is structured;
Long fibers are the neurons;
Short fibers are the glial cells.

just a Fiber

This morning I took a little extra meditation time while the teacher showed me a lesson.

I was graphically seeing how and why all of time-space is...
just a fiber,
in a thread,
in the cloth,
in the great tapestry of life.

As I leave the meditation, it is hard enough to even hang on to some of the pictures and logic and feelings; I am not even going to try to put it into words here.

As I write, I am eating lots of fiber for breakfast.

Celebrating deadly sins

The seven deadly sins:
Lust, Pride, Gluttony, Greed, Envy, Sloth, Wrath.


Ryan pointed out to me that, on each of our major holidays, we tend to focus on a different deadly sin.
Valentine's day we focus on Lust (we usually use more romantic words).
Fourth of July is all about Pride.
Thanksgiving is definitely Gluttony
During the Christmas season, we focus on getting our kids to practice both Envy and Greed.

The above are strong connections. Sloth and Wrath have weaker connections.

We end the year with a wild party, the next day start the year Slothfully lazing in front of the TV, watching football.

Veteran's day we celebrate the people who bravely helped our country deliver its Wrath to other countries.

Anybody have better connections?
Or thoughts about why we tend to celebrate the deadly sins?

Why is attention the currency of life?

Tonight, at a meeting I attended, I was told that many spirits were present. It soon became obvious that the "teacher" was there with me. It seemed like every little thought in my head had an immediate answer. At one point I happened to wonder why attention is the currency of life.
The answer was swift...

The reason that attention is the currency of life should be obvious.
It has been established earlier that pretty much everything is a neural network. Neural networks are like fractals. They are self similar at many scales. On any scale, individual neural networks each act as a single neuron in the next larger scale neural network.

The intelligence and power of any neural network is in the quantity and quality of the connections between neurons. At a social level, every person is seeking to create new or better connections. Every time you pay attention, whether it is to friends, business dealings, or bed time stories; the process fine tunes your connections, it is you doing your duty as a neuron in the bigger brain.

It is programmed into the very nature of nature itself, that living beings will trade mainly in attention, for that is how higher life is formed.

I ran the math, He is more than right.

So Why Is Gas So Damn Expensive?

Written by Aaron Newton on his blog of

Tuesday, 22 May 2007

Well, actually its not. One gallon of gas does the work of one adult male working for six weeks (pretty cheap for the cost of $3)

Pretty sunset

The evening star and crescent moon
hang low over the fading sunset.
A beautiful sight,
They will be gone soon.

We may want a charcoal making setup

This weekend I have been focused on charcoal. I have always planned to use it for cleaning air and water. It adsorbs most organic molecules, removing most odor, taste and color. It is easy to make and when it is dirty, easy to recharge and re-use .

Lately I have been learning that charcoal is also an incredibly useful soil additive. It lasts many hundreds of years in the soil, hanging on to all kinds of organic molecules; so it captures and holds nutrients. Hairlike fungi in the soil tickle the nutrients out of the charcoal and feed them to the plants. In some tests it improves plant productivity by 880%.

Making charcoal creates additional heat and fuel while it uses up some of the mountains of sawmill waste we have around here. When it ends up in the soil, it acts as a carbon sink, taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and reducing global warming.

For us, making charcoal beats the heck out of a win win situation. If I counted right, this is a win win win win win win win.

more information...
Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
Link 4

Simplicity isn't simple

There is a basic truth that I must deal with whenever I try to design something;
Simple only works from a given point of view.

Make something simple for somebody and it almost certainly makes things more complex for someone else. Often that is the value proposition to your customer. Whether you are selling goods or a service, you are saying "I am offering to make it simpler for you to get X, because I will handle the complicated details."

Of course, we often make things unnecessarily complex. Taking unnecessary complications out of your design (or your life) is like editing a movie or a well written essay. It takes a lot of attention, reflection and work to hone it down to be simple and elegant.

Much of civilization is about simplifying. We pave our land, and make buildings with smooth walls and floors because flat is simple. We create uniform laws and currencies. Every time we simplify something, it becomes a platform upon which we can build a more complex structure.

As civilization gets complex, we all eventually want to simplify our lives. When people attempt to return to the simple life, they often find out that nature is enormously complex to deal with.

It boils down to aptitude.
Whatever you are good at seems simple to you.
So, Follow your heart and life gets simpler and better.

By the numbers

Google constantly impresses me. It keeps getting easier to verify wild claims that someone throws at me. So tonight I looked a few things up and, by golly it is not hard to imagine man being capable of messing up the earth.

Let's take it up close and personal.

First we take all the land area in the world, then divide it by the human population; we each get about 6 acres.
Your personal 6 acres is about 1 and a half city blocks. Less than 1/4 of that is suitable for farming. The rest is largely mountain and dessert and frozen tundra.
It is real easy to see how I can affect that much land in my lifetime.

According to Winona Duke, each American's direct and indirect contribution to solid waste is one million pounds per year and 5 million pounds of contaminated water every year.
That sounds impressive, but I am not seeing support for her million pounds per year. The best number I can find is closer to 1500 pounds per year of landfill waste, plus about 40,000 more pounds of CO2, and about 3 million pounds of water.
Ahhh, but that is only on American soil. Add in the stuff we buy from other countries because we prefer that they do the dirty work and create pollution over there. Then add in transporting that stuff around the world. Winona's numbers are pretty close after all.

So...
Imagine if you dump all your 6 million pounds of waste on your own 6 acres.
Without careful management and reuse, you end up living in a smelly garbage infested pig sty.
As long as we buy into our consumer lifestyle, this is what we are doing, but it is mostly in someone else's back yard.

Wisdom of the language

Hopefully this will become a series of entries because there are so many examples of where our language may be harboring a collective wisdom distilled through millions of people over thousands of years.

One example that struck me this morning is "Ignore".
In current usage; "ignore" means "disregard" or "pay no attention to", yet "ignorance" means "to not know".
So does "not knowing" mean that we are actually "not paying attention"?

The teacher was impressing on me this morning that all knowledge is available. We choose to pay no attention to most of it. Some level of ignorance is necessary to play the game we call life on earth.

The take home lesson is that we truly do have the awesome power of knowledge available to us, and it is ok to ignore most knowledge.

Our challenge and our position in the big picture is to make some of that knowledge practical in the here and now.

Thanks, Aina

Truth lies at the point of paradox.

That little message was brought to me by a new friend last week. It elegantly expresses a truth I have been trying to express for years.

Tell me a story

Throughout human history, story tellers have been among the most important and revered people in every culture.
Be good at telling stories.
It will serve you well.

Things people buy

People don't buy things.
People buy stories.

That is a lesson from recent months. It holds true, and is powerful wisdom;
and it can stand to have additional light shine on it.

People also buy function; Such as a house cleaning service, or a tool to drive screws.

If you sell only the function, where the story is not important, you are selling in a commodity market where prices are low, competitive and out of your control.

People need to buy the function of transportation, but the car dealers know better than to sell function. They provide the function, but they sell the story; the sex appeal, the muscles, the fantasy.

Sometimes the only function is the story; such as an autographed baseball. Without the story, the ball is worth a few bucks. With the story it is worth maybe a million bucks. Value in antiques is more story than function. TV, movies, books and fame of all kinds are all about stories. Art and crafts usually have some aesthetic value, but they command big bucks if there is a good story about the artist.

The food pendulum has swung way to the commodity side; cheap with no story you would want to talk about. Now food is swinging toward the story side. You want to know the ingredients, know it is organic, even who grew it and where.

The ideal items to sell would...
a: provide superior functions
b: have a very interesting and compelling story that fits the times.

Informing the giant

Lately I have been studying lessons about communications, perception of reality, and guidance. It has been occupying some of the best hours of the day.

Some of the lessons from this morning's bath, while staring into the water...

Whether they are objects, or ideas, or emotions, the only things we actually observe are the surfaces of neural network energy topologies.

Similar to seeing the world as it is reflected in a pool of water, everything we observe is reflected in the topology of our personal neural network. The dynamics that we observe around us are often ripples in our own surface. A tiny ripple can create enormous distortions.

We can calm our internal ripples and thus get more accurate observations.
We can set up our internal ripples to make us perceive more life, love and good intent than may actually be the case. We can set up our ripples to make us perceive more inertness, hate and mal intent. In either case, we react accordingly. Every other neural net observes us, making our attitude part of their reality. Thus, our attitude ripples through the larger neural landscape that we call reality.

We can apply this knowledge by minimizing emotions, pre-conceptions or body cycles that distort our perceptions when we are dealing with people.
Another way to apply it is to be generous when we think of people. Assume the best of them. They are human and will react accordingly. They will occasionally lash out in anger, or fail in other ways, but they will eventually rise to meet your expectations.

Moving my Giant

I have been emotionally moved lately by watching well done works of animated art.

Last night we watched The Little Mermaid for the first time in many years. I was struck by how smoothly the story flowed and how well it was told. When we watched the "how it was made" feature, it brought tears to my eyes. I was left wondering what it was that affected me so. The best answer I could come up with... It was the story of teams of genius coming together to create something great.

Tonight we watched Spirited Away. There was no need to watch how it was made. The teams of genius showed through in almost every scene.

The emotion is still strong. I am inspired to believe that we must pull our team together and commit an act of genius.

Judging from the animated examples, an act of team genius includes...
Keenly observing mundane details of the world around us.
Inspiration on many fronts and from many talents.
Years of dedicated hard work.
Much practice and focus and editing.
Appropriate public relations.
Spirit guiding us to time things right.

Reduce cholesterol, good side effects

If properly administrated, this way to reduce cholesterol can only have good side effects.

It is a small study that showed a reduction in cholesterol when people wrote affectionate notes about someone in their lives; An even bigger reduction if the note was to your loved one, rather than writing in third person.

Finding my giant

Last weekend, at an impromptu time, Amber guided me on what became a spiritual vision trip.
It was powerful.
I am still absorbing the feelings and the ramifications.
I am changed.

In my paper journal, I wrote details of images I saw. I find myself periodically writing additional thoughts about it; like a list of ingredients that helped make the experience work so well.

In the experience...
Some early images included pagodas and many variations of eastern temples. Then I was traveling towards a radiant ball of energy, like a portal. The ball became a sun rising over a lake. Soon I was traveling on the lake, almost at a right angle to the sun.

The lake was getting narrower and I passed several iconic dead critters.
The lake got narrow like a canyon, then almost like a cave. As I entered, there were waves traveling vertically; up. I could sense that they were alive. Two different streams of undefined energy were also traveling up. I ascended with the energies.

The first thing I saw in this new space was shapes. Clear, simple geometric shapes that I could not define or name. After a few other images that I could not define, I saw simple happy creatures. Clearly these were not any life form known on earth. The feeling was that my guides were very happy to see my arrival. They were showing me that I was now experiencing additional dimensions and it is going to take a while to learn the territory.

Soon I was looking down on sand and pine trees (home). I was able to move around freely while viewing from above. The view was slightly curvy, a little like a fish eye lens except as I moved I could sense the macro view and interior micro details at the same time.

I viewed around me and everywhere I looked the landscape quickly turned lush green. I laughed. Soon I was traveling (like walking 100 feet high) fast enough that I could see the curve of the earth. I was looking everywhere and making much of the continent turn green and lush and productive. I liked the implied message.

Later I saw a storybook opened up to a picture printed across both pages. It was an ocean with a ship on it. The ship sailed out of the two dimensional pages into the three dimensional world. It sailed into a narrow area with land on both sides (similar to the lake in the earlier part of my trip). Crowds of people cheered jubilantly and confetti was in the air everywhere. A closer look revealed that the confetti was actually bees and butterflies.

At the start of the vision trip, I had traveled alone in a small canoe sized boat going North, past iconic dead critters. At the conclusion, I was traveling South through the same passage way; but now in a ship; and abundant, jubilant life was celebrating on all sides.

It took me hours to bring my mind back into this (normal?) world.
I feel larger,
and guided,
and supported,
and more confident that we are successful and doing the right thing.

And we have much to learn.

Another kind of sychronicity?

Again, I need to rethink my theories about the cause of that inner drive that sometimes makes me feel a need to be tied up. That feeling has been extra strong the last few days.

Earliest theories had to do with socially inhibited sex drive. Last year came a realization that this drive doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sex. Recently I had been drifting back toward updates of the old theory.

Today I was surprised by 4 year old Ian when he brought me a piece of rope, put his hands behind his back and politely asked me to tie his hands. In light of the theories that had been on my mind lately, I was so surprised that I didn't really answer him. He asked me at least three times. Later I found that he asked his dad the same thing last night.

Obviously, Ian's wish to be tied up does not spring from socially imposed restrictions on his sex drive. It pokes a big hole in that line of theories. It leaves me really curious why sometimes, some of us want to be tied up. I will be looking for answers, data, research, and your input.

Separation synchronicity

I'm not sure I have ever seen stronger synchronicity in a lesson of the week. Perhaps the teacher is working overtime to get us in alignment.
This week it seems like everyone in the family is dealing with separation issues that are coming to a head.
Lynn and I were dealing heavily with estate planning.
Amy's best friend died.
Ryan working his way out of Green Range Energy.
Raya working her way out of Round Belly Clothing.

Each one contemplates great change.
Each one requires learning to release; to let go.
Each one requires the student to examine who they are, who they might have been, and who they want to be.

In those around us we observe that great change brings great emotion. It tends to progress; Early stages often include anger, then greed. Those emotions need to be accepted as real, but if we act on them, they can trap us in a recursive whirlwind of misery.

If we learn to minimize those parts, we focus on asking "How can we make this the best possible outcome for everyone involved?"

What is your population?

According to Discover magazine, your body is a planet; population 100 trillion cells. However, 90 trillion of them are not your cells. They are bacteria, viruses, yeast and other critters that keep you functioning. Most of them also help defend you from the occasional bad bugs that hurt your walking ecosystem.

Our modern society tends to think that the only good bacteria is a dead bacteria. We tend to focus so much on our fear of the bad bugs that we forget about the good ones. It is not good to eliminate bacteria. It is important to keep a high ratio of good to bad.

Bacteria are everywhere. One teaspoon of soil may contain up to 10,000 species of micro-organisms and billions of individuals. There are specialists for just about every situation that might come up. By changing the ecology, we can encourage certain specialists to flourish. For instance; after an oil spill, the oil eaters take over and help clean up.

When we try to kill bacteria without understanding the ecology, we are likely to set up a situation where the bad guys have no competition, with disastrous results.
The bottom line is two part action...
Clean up anywhere you expect bad bugs (around meat etc.)
Encourage good bugs (healthy soil, yogurt, kefir, etc)

Perfect

I was listening to an interview of the author of The Square Foot Garden on TV last night. As part of his speech habit, he likes to use the word "perfect" a lot.
Later, Ryan and I were contemplating... That is a pretty good philosophy. When something is adequate, it is "perfect".

Eventually, that made us wonder...
What is the difference between mediocrity and moderation?
Mediocrity is moderation in an area in which you like to excel.

Powerful Friends

Let your friends do your work for you.

Time is one of your friends.
No force on earth is more powerful than time. Get to be buddies with it and it will be happy to do you favors, both big and small.
One small example; I have learned to ask of time to help wash the dishes. I used to work hard, using lots of soap and elbow grease to try to scrub baked crusty stuff off of a dish, mostly because I didn't want to spend a lot of time at the task. Now I put the crusty dish under water and let time do most of the work. I come back and help once in a while. We make a good team.
There are many big examples too.

Bugs are friends.
What I loosely call "bugs" do most of the biological work in the world. Getting comfortable with them is important to being comfortable on earth. As we encourage the most helpful bugs, they will help clean and recycle and defend us from unhealthy bugs.

The Teacher is on duty

Yesterday I was low on personal energy due to a 24 hour flu bug. I was tired of everything and wondering why the hell I'm working so hard and investing so much in our crazy venture. There must be better things to do with my time and money; certainly easier things.

Tonight I'm feeling better and started reading some blogs.
Whamo!!
A series of lessons lined up to beat me in the face and say
"THIS is why you are working!"

It started with "How to save the world " Saturday Links
And led to Earth in imminent peril
Then Birds vanishing
Then Climate change and battles for resources will set the world aflame
And Climate change blamed as Lake Superior Shrinks
and more stuff... but you get the idea

Amy update

6:00
Amy is doing her own blog now.

Lynn called at 3:30. Amy is at Mayo and doing well at the moment. She is hydrated and not in pain; just slightly nauseated; not even on an IV. Doctors are running tests. Colin is still with Amy. Lynn and Ruth are going to bed.


Background:
Amy was feeling good in the morning (Wednesday) and even walked 1/2 way to work. By 2:00 she started getting sick and went home. By evening she was in pain, had blood in her stool and bad diarrhea.

She went into the emergency room at Brainerd. Her white blood count was very high. After a little consulting, they decided not to mess with it, and to ship her to Mayo by ambulance.

Life happens

Babysitting on a regular basis lately is keeping me a full time grampa. That tends to eat up the words, time, and energy that I might otherwise have spent blogging.

So... rather than writing clever insights into life, I'm living it for a while.

Password woes

I seemed to be stuck in a perpetual loop. Google (blogspot) seemed determined not to let me change my password, but I finally got it done.

Maybe now I can use this site more often.

Storage

Lynn asked me to find a place to store this telephone number if we need to reach Ruth and Nathan. This is the most accessible place I could think of.


Dear Family:

On Monday May 21, we leave for our two-week trip to Hungary, etc. We return home on June 6, 2007.

Here's how to reach us.
1. Dial 1-866-305-6462

2. Then dial our global premium mobile number 447924078640

Please call only in case of an emergency.

With much love,

Denny and Ruth Talbot

Quotes that struck me today

We don't see things as they are, but as we are.-Anais Nin
The world is our mirror.


Never grow a wishbone where your backbone ought to be.-Clementine Padford


Zen meditation isn't what you think...

Physical addiction

We are hooked on fossil fuels in such a huge way. We not only built personal habits around them, we built our physical infrastructure around them.

We used to be able to walk to the local neighborhood grocery store. Now we drive to a big box supermarket. Big box stores are located on big new sites where there are no sidewalks or bike trails.
We used to be able to walk to school. Now schools serve a 20 mile radius, and new schools are often located in the country, where nobody can walk to them.

It will be very difficult to change our infrastructure to again make it easy to live without constant dependency on cars.

This is a good analogy to what goes on in our bodies when we get hooked into a strong habit. Our brain physically changes as habits get ingrained. To change that habit can be as personally painful and difficult as it will be for our country to change its physical layout to reduce fossil fuel consumption.

Habits-R-Us

Habits are the only things that exist.

We are made up entirely of habits.
Matter is just habitual patterns of energy.
Neural networks are adjustable habit machines.

Habits can be deep and ingrained, or shallow and easily changed.
We can even have a habit of changing habits.
(It helps you be creative.)

Once we absorb and accept the idea that we are composed of habits, we realize that the hardest thing to do in life (change habits) is actually our deepest source of power.

I can shape and mold who I am and how I react.
I can make onerous tasks easy.
I can make dirty dishes clean without a thought.

I can improve my littlest habits slowly every day.
After 1000 days Just imagine how much better I will be.


Sow a thought, reap an act
Sow an act, reap a habit
Sow a habit, reap a character
Sow a character, reap a destiny
. old Chinese proverb

Power

We are walking around in a convention center. Several vendors are handing out free helium balloons and the little kid we have in tow has his fair share. To ensure the safety of his prized balloons, we start tying them to our cart. Suddenly a finger slips and the precious balloons float 30 feet to the ceiling.

This has happened many times over the years. Usually the kid panics and has an emotional meltdown on the spot. The sense of loss affects even the adults. The kid is inconsolable.

This time was different. Ethan (the kid) watched it go up, then he grinned and said; "we can get them."

Why the change?
Where did this new sense of empowerment come from?
He wasn't just given these balloons. He earned them by spending the previous few hours plucking strays off the ceiling. He acquired a balloon with 30 feet of string, then attached some duct tape sticky side out. He learned patience and motor skills as he fished for the balloons 30 feet above him. The whole operation also taught problem solving and people interface skills.

Now he knows he can act to make a situation better.
That brings a sense of confidence and calmness.
That is personal power.
It is also great entrepreneur training.

Catch-up

I'm not waiting any longer for the perfect inspiration to write a blog. Between medical dramas on all sides, excess meetings and an enhanced role as grampa, time has been slipping right past the log-in screen. So, I'm sitting here with a stuffy nose, a minor fever and a minor tooth ache, ready to write with or without inspiration.

It is fun watching Rochester learning to write blogs and handle money.

You have to marvel at today's temperature. If I read the history right, it didn't just set a record; it blew past the old record by 20 degrees F. I have seen entire junes that never got this warm. This comes on top of the warmest winter in the whole world by a huge margin. (note: further research tells me that wunderground is not the best place to do weather research. the real margin is more like 3 degrees)

Maybe by the time Al Gore gets drafted as president, we will see that global warming is moving faster than we thought.

DreamSpeak

Early morning; I start becoming lucid enough to realize that the series of challenges and frustrations that have been dogging me are actually dreams. I can relax a bit and not take them as seriously.
Then I notice a pattern...

Each of the dreams was about a building. Each building had maintenance problems. Each was a hassle and potentially dangerous. Then I realized that when you dream about a building, it usually represents your body. It makes sense because I have been surrounded by medical issues lately.

The first dream, the problem was some food we had left lying around in a remote part of the house for untold years. Now it is a mess. It is a potential health hazard and is real difficult to clean up.
It represents Me (and Lynn). We spent much of last week getting in depth physical exams. Both of us need to eat better food and exercise more.

The buildings in successive dreams had successively more severe problems. The last one had severe, actively worsening cracks in the foundation. Pipes and wires were breaking and oozing all over the place.
I think they represent Ian, who needs surgery on his spine before things get worse; and they represent Eric, Amy's friend who has a football size cancer tumor eating up his colon. I had been doing research all evening to find options for both of them.

Ian update

Raya got more news from the doctor today about Ian's MRI. Stay tuned to her blog for the latest.

Background research...
FAQs about tethered spinal cords

Going slow

As of this morning's x-ray, Ian still has most of the metal inside him. He is still being flushed out. They are about 1/2 way through the second gallon container of fluid that is being pumped into his stomach. His tummy is mostly distended, but the fluid is trickling through and flushing him out.

The poor nurses are cleaning up lots of messes. They are really nice about it.

As we slip into the weekend, you can bet there won't be a lot of professionals hanging around for high level testing and diagnosis. The doctors are talking about an MRI next week. It sounds like this may take a while.

Right now Ian is playing happily with a cool toy they gave him as a reward for being good (to distract him) while they stuffed another tube down his nose. He coughed up the last one after his nap.

Ian update

Nothing went exactly as planned.
We arrived at St Mary's hospital at 8:30 for Ian's 9:00 procedure. At 11:32 the procedure finally started. They put some tools up his butt to reach the coins in his intestine. While they had him under, a neurologist tested the nerves that control his bowels. There is function there, but it is weak. We don't know exactly what that implies yet.

They managed to retrieve one badly stained nickel. They weren't able to reach the rest of the metal due to a "shelf" of skin that made it hard to navigate to them. So they stuffed a tube down his nose and plan to flush out the intestines from the stomach side.

When Ian woke up with a tube in his nose and an IV in his hand, he was not a happy camper. He had restraints on his arms to prevent him from pulling out tubes, but being resourceful, he pulled the one out of his nose anyway. After that he stopped fussing and slept for a few hours.

Later a new tube went down with no problem. Now he is happily eating jello and playing with a cool little toy while gallons of fluid are being pumped into his tummy.
I hope this flush works.

Update from Mayo

This has been a medical week.
Lynn and I signed up for thorough physical exams at one of the best clinics in the world. (As long as it is in our state, we might as well take advantage of it.) Raya had appointments to find out what is happening with Ian's bowels, so we managed to get all our appointments in the same week.

So here we are... Lynn and I know more about our bodies than we used to. We are both basically healthy but need to exercise more and eat less meat.

We expected to hear that Ian's bowel problem was caused by a wheat allergy. Instead we found out that he has 4 or 5 pieces of metal stuck in his gut and masses of fecal matter dammed up behind it. Then the doctor was surprised that no one has told Raya before that Ian is missing the bottom two vertebrae. That might indicate that nerves don't function properly in his bowels.

Imagine 10 dimensions

I have often tried to stretch my brain to try to imagine what a four dimensional object would be like. Then I learned that I have to stretch further. The following video goes a long way to help.

When you go there, click on the rotating icon on the right.

Feelings of the week

It has been a busy week of playing catch-up.
All around me is life and death and life again.
My family members are growing older. As long as I avoid a mirror, I am not.

Everything goes slower and costs more than planned, and yet all goes well.
People are enthused. projects are happening.
Every day more people are coming to HUG for advice about some aspect of sustainable living.
Every day HUG becomes tangibly more intertwined with our community.
The learning curve is still steep,
and I love it.

We think we made contact

This morning we went shopping for a person who could be act as a local agent for RoundBelly to buy from the local artisans. Guatemala is famous for colorful hand woven clothing. San Antonio Aguas Caliente is a village near us that is reputed to have the finest workmanship (workWomanship?) in the country.

Today we made a special trip to see more of their work and to talk with the workers. Most of the weaving is done in homes and sales shops. I took lots of pictures. Lynn bought samples. Most of the women can’t get their minds off of an immediate cash sale. They don’t seem to easily grasp a relationship resulting in a steady series of sales. They all seem very pleasant and fun to talk with.

I want to be careful not to force an industrial model onto their artisan lifestyle. We shouldn’t order too many at once, or expect every piece to be identical. We want to make their way of life more rewarding, not kill it.

Finally our guide brought us to a non profit museum dedicated to helping preserve the artisan’s way of life. They act as a micro-lender to help people buy thread and such. They act as a sales outlet and a museum. They are happy to work with us to sell their products.

Perhaps we will want to set up a fair trade section in RoundBelly’s website just to promote such work from many countries.

Lesson from Irwin, the martial artist

Written Sunday

We are staying at a resort in Antigua, Guatemala. This morning we were four American tourists trying to decipher the Spanish language activities poster in the courtyard. Suddenly a well-dressed black guy appeared amidst us. He introduced himself as Irwin, from Aruba, and from the time-share sales office next door.

I have been to a number of time-share sales pitches. The skills of the salespeople vary, but the pitches are relentlessly high pressure and well organized. He seemed likable and helpful, but my defenses were up as he learned who we were.

When he asked us which rooms we were staying in, he immediately brought up the worst feature of those rooms (they are too near the traffic noise) and he asked us what we thought could be done to improve the noise problem.

It was a problem that we could have just complained about, but suddenly our minds were engaged to solve it. For the moment it didn’t matter that we were not acoustical engineers or that he was not likely in a position to make changes.

In what could be described as the finest move I have ever seen in martial arts, Irwin had broken down our defenses, as we all became part of the same team. In one smooth move that we didn’t even realize he was making, he found where we were off balance and then used our own energy to his advantage.

Follow through is important in any martial arts move. He brainstormed with us on the traffic noise for a minute until WE changed the subject. He continued to be helpful with advice about local things. He made sure we remembered his name. By the time he left, we had no fear or hesitancy about talking with him.

Later this week, if it comes time for him to sell us something, Irwin already has the hardest stages out of the way. If he makes these kinds of moves a regular habit, I bet he is a very successful salesman.

Technofantasy and Affluenza

Two different topics in two different magazine articles caught my attention.

Technofantasy referred to our tendency to focus on the cool new changes in technology while we tend to forget that old technologies are the really important ones. We hype up the new and future stuff so much that we tend to build our psychological world around them. Meanwhile, our lives are really supported by technologies like corrugated steel roofing, water pipes, glass.

Affluenza points to clinical evidence that people in many western societies are getting more psychologically stressed and less prone to be happy.

It seems like everything I come across lately is giving me moral encouragement and hints how to build the down-to-earth neighborhoods that drive their own economies and lifestyles. Short circuit the rat race and replace it with a semi-simple physically active lifestyle that has the best elements of aboriginal wisdom and of modern life.

Concentrated effort

I said; I am always looking to make the world a better place.

I was told...
: The only way to be effective at that is to start inside yourself, then work locally.
: It is darn hard to truly help people who are far away if you don't help those nearby.
: The effect of your local success will ripple, and help more and farther than you imagine.

The ARC

I have been spending most of my writing energy at HUG's new WIKI.

Using the same software as Wikipedia, we are inviting anyone interested to help us design a kind of agricultural neighborhood. We call it the ARC project (for Agricultural, Resilient Communities) (or Anti Retirement Communities.) I expect an ARC community to have a very pleasant, down to earth lifestyle, a robust economic base, and very low energy consumption.

It has been keeping us awake nights for a while as we try to put into words all the synergies that the ARC will pull together.

Lesson of the day

To let go is to fear less and to love more.